Unlocking the Adjectives

In Pakistan, I have observed that adjectives are not given the importance they truly deserve. The indifference, shown by the teachers, regarding adjectives, is deplorable.


A typical Pakistani student completes his matriculation and enters intermediate level of education. From there he or she progresses to a university and academically evolves into a graduate-- but very seldom intellectually.

During all this time, he lumps verbs and adjectives together and ravishes his sentence structure.

First of all a student must realize that Adjectives describe nouns by pointing towards them. For example:

I am honest because I have honesty (The adjective 'honest' points to my 'honesty')
I am tall because my height reflects my tallness ( The adjective 'tall' indicates the level of tallness)
 

Now, let's move to the common errors that are made consistently:

1. The words that end with 'ed' are commonly considered as verbs, if you ask a student to differentiate between "I am disappointed"  or "I disappointed", most would feel confused.
2.  Most don't know that link verbs such as be, seem, become have to be used with adjectives.
3. Many students do not have any idea that most adjectives can be placed before noun or after a link verb but some come before a noun only (attributive) while others follow a link verb (predicative)

List of adjectives that only come before a noun

 elder, eldest, little, live (meaning living and not dead),  intensifying adjectives like mere, sheer.    


 I  would write some sentences to show their position:

• She is the eldest sister
• Do not touch the live wire

  But you cannot say I am live

List of adjectives that only come after a link verb :

afraid, asleep,ill, well, afloat


And now the examples:

I am afraid but you cannot say the afraid man